Video marketing has countless benefits, but there’s one in particular we want to focus on: improving SEO. Search engine optimization has become such an invaluable tool for marketers; 64 percent of users use search in their I-want-to-buy moments, and 71 percent visit a retailer website or app when they’re in the decision-making stage. That means it’s crucial for your website to not only rank on search engine results pages (SERPs), but rank high.

Shooting, editing, and producing videos has previously been a time-consuming and expensive venture that has seemed unattractive to many marketers. However, it’s now easier than ever before! With programs becoming more and more accessible, cheaper, and easier to use, people are finding themselves opening up to the idea of being both behind and in front of the camera.

Submit website to directories (limited use). Professional search marketers don’t sub­mit the URL to the major search engines, but it’s possible to do so. A better and faster way is to get links back to your site naturally. Links get your site indexed by the search engines. However, you should submit your URL to directories such as Yahoo! (paid), Business.com (paid) and DMOZ (free). Some may choose to include AdSense (google.com/adsense) scripts on a new site to get their Google Media bot to visit. It will likely get your pages indexed quickly.
Video can also provide social proof for your product or service. According to WebDam, customer testimonials have the highest effectiveness rating for content marketing at 89%. When creating video success stories focus on the story of your customer and the success he/she achieved from using your product/service. This nifty question template from Copyblogger will help you create awesome and human-focused video and written testimonials.
There’s a lot leading up to this day, but what a day! Production dayExtended Article7 Must-Know Tips for Production Day FilmingIt’s production day! All your planning and creative brainstorming have led to this. Whether you’re handling production yourself or have hired a team to… Read More can be crazy and hectic, or totally cool and organized. It’s when you finally see your video come to life for the first time — there’s a definite feeling of accomplishment. Exciting as it may be, there’s still a lot to do to ensure your video is the best it can be.
What is ​search engine optimization, then? It's not secrets or tricks — just ranking methodologies to follow in order to help a site that offers value to users beat the competition in search results. Today, you must be committed not just to optimizing your domain, but also to making it a quality site that attracts links naturally and is worthy of ranking.

Online marketing can also be crowded and competitive. Although the opportunities to provide goods and services in both local and far-reaching markets is empowering, the competition can be significant. Companies investing in online marketing may find visitors’ attention is difficult to capture due to the number of business also marketing their products and services online. Marketers must develop a balance of building a unique value proposition and brand voice as they test and build marketing campaigns on various channels.

Moreover: if you don’t have to, don’t change your URLs. Even if your URLs aren’t “pretty,” if you don’t feel as though they’re negatively impacting users and your business in general, don’t change them to be more keyword focused for “better SEO.” If you do have to change your URL structure, make sure to use the proper (301 permanent) type of redirect. This is a common mistake businesses make when they redesign their websites.
To avoid undesirable content in the search indexes, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard robots.txt file in the root directory of the domain. Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine's database by using a meta tag specific to robots (usually ). When a search engine visits a site, the robots.txt located in the root directory is the first file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed and will instruct the robot as to which pages are not to be crawled. As a search engine crawler may keep a cached copy of this file, it may on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not wish crawled. Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login specific pages such as shopping carts and user-specific content such as search results from internal searches. In March 2007, Google warned webmasters that they should prevent indexing of internal search results because those pages are considered search spam.[45]

Digital marketing planning is a term used in marketing management. It describes the first stage of forming a digital marketing strategy for the wider digital marketing system. The difference between digital and traditional marketing planning is that it uses digitally based communication tools and technology such as Social, Web, Mobile, Scannable Surface.[57][58] Nevertheless, both are aligned with the vision, the mission of the company and the overarching business strategy.[59]

Our online Professional Diploma in Social Media Marketing teaches you the best practices for marketing through YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. It includes 30 hours of in-depth lectures taught by industry experts and will equip you with all the skills and knowledge you need to plan, build and measure effective social media strategies. Find out more here.
The first step in creating your video strategy is outlining your video’s goals. Ideally, you’ll want to create a video forExtended ArticleThe Right Video Content for Your Marketing FunnelBefore you embark on creating a video marketing strategy, it’s important to know what stage of the marketing funnel you’re targeting. This is important… Read More every stage of the marketing funnel. But, initially, you’ll have to decide which stage is the most important to target.
Game advertising - In-Game advertising is defined as "inclusion of products or brands within a digital game."[49] The game allows brands or products to place ads within their game, either in a subtle manner or in the form of an advertisement banner. There are many factors that exist in whether brands are successful in their advertising of their brand/product, these being: Type of game, technical platform, 3-D and 4-D technology, game genre, congruity of brand and game, prominence of advertising within the game. Individual factors consist of attitudes towards placement advertisements, game involvement, product involvement, flow or entertainment. The attitude towards the advertising also takes into account not only the message shown but also the attitude towards the game. Dependent of how enjoyable the game is will determine how the brand is perceived, meaning if the game isn't very enjoyable the consumer may subconsciously have a negative attitude towards the brand/product being advertised. In terms of Integrated Marketing Communication "integration of advertising in digital games into the general advertising, communication, and marketing strategy of the firm"[49] is an important as it results in a more clarity about the brand/product and creates a larger overall effect.
There are also a few more similarities. All of these marketing methods are measurable to an extent never seen in any other media. Every click can be measured – where and when it came – and followed through to the conversion, the sale and the lifetime customer value. This feedback loop creates optimization opportunities that can create huge incremental improvements in your SEM campaigns.

One common scam is the creation of "shadow" domains that funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects. These shadow domains often will be owned by the SEO who claims to be working on a client's behalf. However, if the relationship sours, the SEO may point the domain to a different site, or even to a competitor's domain. If that happens, the client has paid to develop a competing site owned entirely by the SEO.

In years gone by, Google has appeared to be giving preferential treatment to mobile over desktop. In 2015, the mobile-friendly update or ‘Mobilegeddon’ as it became informally known, paved the way for mobile-friendly content creators to rank higher. Since then, we’ve also seen the Mobile-first Index and a number of other activities aimed at bettering the consumer experience on mobile.

Because your definition of a “conversion” is up to you, the metrics to measure here can vary. Generally, a strong video will have a high percentage of clicks, calls, signups, or sales. A strong video may also lead to more interaction with your brand, meaning your video has maintained the viewer’s attention, but they may need just a little more information before making their decision.
Walker Sands is a public relations and digital marketing agency for business-to-business technology companies. In the past two decades, we've cultivated a culture that prioritizes collaboration. While other agencies have struggled to bring public relations and digital services together, we’ve made that our foundation. With an integrated approach to creative services, we help clients build brand awareness, enhance credibility and drive new business. Our talented teams assist our clients in a wide array of areas including public relations, content marketing, design, web services, demand generation and branding and strategy. Walker Sands is a six-time Inc. 5000 honoree and regular recipient of some of the industry’s most prestigious awards from organizations including Entrepreneur, Holmes Report and Hermes Creative. Walker Sands was founded in 2001 and has offices in Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle. To learn more, visit walkersands.com or walkersandsdigital.com.
You may or may not decide to make search engine marketing part of your marketing and advertising strategy. If you don't have a website for your business and don't plan to ever have one, you certainly wouldn't need search engine marketing. However, in today's business climate, nearly all business are expected to have a website. In fact, since most people go online to find information, even about their local businesses, not having a website can hurt your chances of being found. Since having a website is crucial to success, there's no reason not to take advantage of what search engines offer to help you get found.

Online reviews, then, have become another form of internet marketing that small businesses can't afford to ignore. While many small businesses think that they can't do anything about online reviews, that's not true. Just by actively encouraging customers to post reviews about their experience small businesses can weight online reviews positively. Sixty-eight percent of consumers left a local business review when asked. So assuming a business's products or services are not subpar, unfair negative reviews will get buried by reviews by happier customers.

If you’ve read SEOmoz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO and want more, or you’ve read my other basic guides to SEO and want more - this Advanced Guide To SEO is for you. If you’ve already mastered the basics of SEO like writing title tags, the basics of link building or data research on the web and want more - this guide is for you! It’s for anyone looking to take their success on the web to the next level; bloggers, business owners, eCommerce and even affiliate marketers. This guide provides you with dozens and dozens of things you can sit down and do right now to improve your traffic from organic search on the web.
That's what kept bringing me back to Sharpe. When it comes to internet marketing, this is one of the masterminds in the industry, a high-8-figure earner who recently generated over $1 million dollars within a 60-day period with a brand new system. I knew that if I was going to help educate people about internet marketing, I had to go straight to the top. Sharpe is also one of the most relatable characters in the industry, who speaks eloquently and fluidly, able to inspire millions of people with ease.
Incorporate humor and emotion – It might surprise you, but videos that are downright funny can help with ad recall and brand awareness. Humans are designed to remember an encounter that sparks an emotional reaction, whether that’s fear, enjoyment, or humor. It makes sense—think about some ads that stick out to you: talking animals, laughing babies, epic travel ads, and other simple videos that might seem innocent enough, but are really doing an incredible job of capturing and retaining the attention of their audience.
As you craft your story, keep in mind the people who will need to approve your video (your manager, your company’s founder, your marketing department, etc.) and the time it takes to implement their feedback. Sudden changes in scripting, messaging, goals, and more can throw your whole production off-kilter. But still, these changes are all too common. Take a look at our creative guide that’ll help you manage creative feedback from everyone on your team.
8. Technical SEO. Technical SEO is one of the most intimidating portions of the SEO knowledge base, but it’s an essential one. Don’t let the name scare you; the most technical elements of SEO can be learned even if you don’t have any programming or website development experience. For example, you can easily learn how to update and replace your site’s robots.txt file, and with the help of an online template, you should be able to put together your sitemap efficiently.
Conversion rate optimization is all about testing. Many companies get too bogged down in design and what they think looks best and will convert. At the end of the day, you don’t know until you test. At IMI, we have the tools, technology, and expertise to not only build well-optimized web pages but to test them once they go live. Our conversion rate optimization can not only save our client’s money but generate millions in revenue.

As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 1990s, search engines started appearing to help people find information quickly. Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click programs offered by Open Text[7] in 1996 and then Goto.com[8] in 1998. Goto.com later changed its name[9] to Overture in 2001, was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing. Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google AdWords program. By 2007, pay-per-click programs proved to be primary moneymakers[10] for search engines. In a market dominated by Google, in 2009 Yahoo! and Microsoft announced the intention to forge an alliance. The Yahoo! & Microsoft Search Alliance eventually received approval from regulators in the US and Europe in February 2010.[11]

Email marketing - Email marketing in comparison to other forms of digital marketing is considered cheap; it is also a way to rapidly communicate a message such as their value proposition to existing or potential customers. Yet this channel of communication may be perceived by recipients to be bothersome and irritating especially to new or potential customers, therefore the success of email marketing is reliant on the language and visual appeal applied. In terms of visual appeal, there are indications that using graphics/visuals that are relevant to the message which is attempting to be sent, yet less visual graphics to be applied with initial emails are more effective in-turn creating a relatively personal feel to the email. In terms of language, the style is the main factor in determining how captivating the email is. Using casual tone invokes a warmer and gentle and inviting feel to the email in comparison to a formal style. For combinations; it's suggested that to maximize effectiveness; using no graphics/visual alongside casual language. In contrast using no visual appeal and a formal language style is seen as the least effective method.[48]
Another example when the “nofollow" attribute can come handy are widget links. If you are using a third party's widget to enrich the experience of your site and engage users, check if it contains any links that you did not intend to place on your site along with the widget. Some widgets may add links to your site which are not your editorial choice and contain anchor text that you as a webmaster may not control. If removing such unwanted links from the widget is not possible, you can always disable them with “nofollow" attribute. If you create a widget for functionality or content that you provide, make sure to include the nofollow on links in the default code snippet.

The next step? How will you communicate with people. Sharpe says that you need to decide on this early on. Will you blog? Will you use social media? Will you build a list by working with solo ad providers? Will you place paid advertisements? What will you do and how will you do it? What you must realize here is that you have to get really good at copy writing. The better you get at copy writing, the more success you'll find as an internet marketer.

Baseline ranking assessment. You need to understand where you are now in order to accurately assess your future rankings. Keep a simple Excel sheet to start the process. Check weekly to begin. As you get more comfortable, check every 30 to 45 days. You should see improvements in website traffic, a key indicator of progress for your keywords. Some optimizers will say that rankings are dead. Yes, traffic and conversions are more important, but we use rankings as an indicator.
Online networking, when executed correctly, allows you to build valuable relationships in online forums and groups that can help you advance your business. You could meet peers and fellow experts with whom you could collaborate or partner up with for a project, or you could provide value to your target audience by sharing your knowledge and winning over some customers as a result. No matter what, though, the goal with this type of marketing is purely relationship building and not selling outright.
Social Media Marketing (SMM): Focuses on branding, reputation enhancement and enhanced customer service via social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Smaller SMM channels include Digg, Delicious, Wikipedia, StumbleUpon and MySpace. Social networks are visited by a collective total of over one-billion people. Thus, even the simplest marketing efforts, like paid advertising, reach potentially large audiences.
The inbound methodology is the marketing and sales approach focused on attracting customers through content and interactions that are relevant and helpful. Each video you create should acknowledge your audience’s challenges and provide a solution. Looking at the big picture, this content guides consumers through the journey of becoming aware of, evaluating, and purchasing your product or service.

Most people need to take a step back and understand where money is even coming from on the web. Sharpe says that, when asked, most individuals don't actually even know how money is being made on a high level. How does Facebook generate its revenues? How about Google? How do high-trafficked blogs become so popular and how do they generate money from all of that traffic? Is there one way or many?

Now that you’ve attracted video viewers and website visitors, the next step is to convert these visitors into leads. With most inbound marketing content, this means collecting some sort of contact information via a form. Video can aid this process by visualizing a solution to the buyer’s problem, whether that’s before the form on a landing page or as the offer itself. Overall, the goal of this kind of video is to educate and excite.
Videos allow you to increase the time spent by visitors on your site. Thus, longer exposure builds trust and signals search engines that your site has good content. Moovly gives us whopping statistics: You’re 53 times more likely show up first on Google if you have a video embedded on your website. Since Google now owns YouTube, there has been a significant increase in how much videos affect your search engine rank.
What is ​search engine optimization, then? It's not secrets or tricks — just ranking methodologies to follow in order to help a site that offers value to users beat the competition in search results. Today, you must be committed not just to optimizing your domain, but also to making it a quality site that attracts links naturally and is worthy of ranking.
Paid channel marketing is something you’ve probably come across in some form or another. Other names for this topic include Search Engine Marketing (SEM), online advertising, or pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. Very often, marketers use these terms interchangeably to describe the same concept — traffic purchased through online ads. Marketers frequently shy away from this technique because it costs money. This perspective will put you at a significant disadvantage. It’s not uncommon for companies to run PPC campaigns with uncapped budgets. Why? Because you should be generating an ROI anyway. This chapter walks through the basics of how.
Some brands and influencers have found an incredible niche on YouTube. YouTube personalities Casey Neistat and Amy Schmittauer are awesome examples of influencers with a loyal following while GoPro is the Cinderella story of brands making it big. Those, along with countless others, have discovered a formula for YouTube success and it has worked well.
Another illicit practice is to place "doorway" pages loaded with keywords on the client's site somewhere. The SEO promises this will make the page more relevant for more queries. This is inherently false since individual pages are rarely relevant for a wide range of keywords. More insidious, however, is that these doorway pages often contain hidden links to the SEO's other clients as well. Such doorway pages drain away the link popularity of a site and route it to the SEO and its other clients, which may include sites with unsavory or illegal content.
If you're not using internet marketing to market your business you should be. An online presence is crucial to helping potential clients and customer find your business - even if your business is small and local. (In 2017, one third of all mobile searches were local and local search was growing 50% faster than mobile searches overall.) Online is where the eyeballs are so that's where your business needs to be.

Here’s the truth – only one site can be number one for a particular keyword, and there’s a lot of competition out there. But optimizing your site can make a difference to which site that is, as rankings fluctuate all the time. Plus, as long as you’re in the top 3, or at least on the first page, you’ve got a chance for people to find and click, which is what you want. If you deliver what they need after the click, that increases your chances of being relevant for future searches for that term.

By 2004, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms to reduce the impact of link manipulation. In June 2007, The New York Times' Saul Hansell stated Google ranks sites using more than 200 different signals.[25] The leading search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Some SEO practitioners have studied different approaches to search engine optimization, and have shared their personal opinions.[26] Patents related to search engines can provide information to better understand search engines.[27] In 2005, Google began personalizing search results for each user. Depending on their history of previous searches, Google crafted results for logged in users.[28]